Big flap in Key West

The sunsets are Monet perfect as always and there is no shortage of tourists lined up to visit the Ernest Hemingway home. But beneath Key West's terminally laid back atmosphere, a civil war is brewing over the town's most controversial resident:

The Key West wild chicken.

For an island that has served as a haven for everyone from pirates to bootleggers to cross-dressers, the so-called feral chickens that roam Key West may finally be the citizens too unruly for the town's famed anything-goes lifestyle. And even here, the site of Mardi Gras-style parties staged every night on Duval Street by tourists adorned in beads and floral shirts as loud as their reveling, the chickens have worn out their welcome.

To Assistant City Manager John Jones, the chickens are a civic problem, no different from a shortage of parking or an excess of potholes. But it is the complaints over the chickens that are enlivening the phone lines at City Hall. Hundreds of miffed residents have called in their chicken problems to Mr. Jones's office where, until recently, the complaints were taken down and little else was done.

According to Jones, the wild chickens that strut down city streets and approach diners in outdoor cafes for hand outs have gone from being part of the city's funky charm to a public nuisance. "These roosters, the fighting cocks, they don't know when to shut up. Boy, they crow loud," he says. "And one starts and it sets off a chain reaction."

Some Key Westers or "Conchs," as locals call themselves, say that out-of-towners can't grasp the full dimensions of their troubles. The Key West chickens are no ordinary fowl, they claim, but an especially abrasive strain that descended from prize fighting cocks. Over the years, chickens have been blamed for everything from blocking traffic, to attacking house pets, to fouling the waters off local beaches with their droppings.

In response, the Key West Chamber of Commerce in January allocated $18,000 to hire the first chicken catcher in the city's - and probably any other city's - history. If the removal plan goes as scheduled, about 900 of the island's 2,000 free-roaming chickens will be captured and shipped to a produce farm near Miami over the next six months. There they will help keep the cockroach and scorpion populations in check.

But even before the first bird could be seized, some Conchs - yes, the itinerant agitators do have their defenders - got mad over the plan to reduce the population. Not far from the tourist bars on Duval Street, Katha Sheehan sits in her Chicken Store and explains to visitors that it's Key West's people - not poultry - who are the problem.

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